Page 23 - WhyAsInY

DoCtor’s HosPital
by naming her son, of all things, Harry Yaverbaum. And, apparently, there were no other suitable names beginning with an H. Not Hector, which was not particularly Jewish-sounding; not Horace, too Roman; not Horatio, ditto; not Henry, the first name of that well-known anti-Semite of automobile fame; not Hagen, who did, it must be admitted, however, kill Siegfried in Götterdämmerung; not Habib—thankfully—and certainly not Hans or Heinrich, which, for obvious reasons, were not in fashion in 1944; fortunately, Harriet was a nonstarter.
So Harvey (Breton for “battle-worthy”) it was. Problem solved? Wrong. To her dying day, my mother swore that my father’s family (“the Yaverbaums,” said with a snarl) forced her to name me Harvey, a name that she would never have chosen. Worse, the Yaverbaums (meaning, in this case, my father’s sisters, Celia Yaverbaum, who was older, and Anna Yaverbaum Peltz, who was younger, but not—in this case—his youngest sibling, his brother, Albert Reade, who was in the Air Force in Europe at the time) conspired to have me named Harvey, not after Harry Caplan, my mother’s father, but, taking full advantage of my mom’s weakened condition and demonstrating classic Yaverbaum chutzpah, after Harry Yaverbaum, their father! Just how this was accomplished I could never quite fathom, but I do believe that my mother’s allegation was one factor that led me to become interested in philosophy.
My middle name, for no reason that has ever been identified to me, became Joel, which is Old Testament for he who wills or commands, but, as you may have gleaned from the Breton meaning of Harvey, it is unlikely that etymology played a part in this decision either. (Unlike my mother and most of the rest of us, my father did not have a middle name; he was fond of explaining that his family could not afford one.)
I should state that I have never been enamored of my first name. While my last name carries with it the ostensible advantage of being memorable, I was teased when I was a child for having the same name as the imaginary six-foot-three-inch-tall invisible rabbit that was the key character in the 1944 Pulitzer Prize–winning play called, you guessed it, Harvey. And, by the way, it is no mean trick to be shorter than a rabbit that can’t be seen.
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